First, thank you for hating PHP, i'd hate to see it ending up like javascript, especially when ppl misunderstand basic things like this. This 'braindead' system is how the web has been designed from the start. And that issue can easily be mitigated by having using an index.php that simply does require('../app/app.php'). Serving files as text really has nothing to do with PHP since PHP interpreter isnt even invoked at all.